Feb 6, 2017

Salient Cases of Three Lives Transformed Through the Power of Knowledge in the New Salem Educational Initiative


A Note to My Readers:  



The names used for the students and their family members in this article are, in the manner of my typical practice, data privacy pseudonyms.


Damon Preston, little (half-) brother Javon Jakes, and mom Evelyn Patterson are thriving.

 

Thriving.

 

I am amazed and honored to convey the abiding situation with such unqualified phrasing.

 

When I last wrote about this trio in October 2016, I was able to convey that the lives of Damon, Javon, and Evelyn had taken a decided upswing.  Evelyn had largely extricated herself from her relationship with Marcel Gifford and was taking necessary legal action to keep him from coming around the new duplex in Coon Rapids to which I moved the family in my 2008 Toyota Matrix late last July 2016.

 

Evelyn’s restraining order on Marcel has been effective in keeping him away.  He tried to check in a couple of times on Facebook but Evelyn held to her principles and plan of action, reminding him that even that means of contact was a violation.  Marcel, who lived the gang life in Chicago and was involved in enough nefarious activity as to want to keep clear of the court system in Minnesota, ultimately got the message and has now kept both his physical and electronic distance from Evelyn and her boys.

 

I have had the supreme joy of seeing the tension leave the faces of all three members of this family of  people endeavoring against great odds to make a way for themselves in the world.  Easy smiles have replaced fear and vexation in the countenances of all three.  And Evelyn, who this time last year was several pounds overweight, sleeping fitfully, and struggling with an array of mental demons that have haunted her all of her life---  now has shed much of the extra weight, has the look of a rested human being, and is making great progress in processing the disturbing experiences from a life that both early on in Chicago and since coming to Minnesota has known far too much abuse in way too many forms.

 

When I arrive these days to pick up Damon for transport to our weekly academic sessions at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, the scene is so much different from what it ever was at any of the other residences to which I had followed his family:  two in North Minneapolis, one in far South Minneapolis, and that last one on the East Side in St. Paul: 

 

The duplex is tidy. 

 

There is less smell of cigarette smoke and none of reefer. 

 

Evelyn and the boys are relaxed, in the midst of enjoyable activities undistracted by any troubling episodes of the type that had mounted in St. Paul.

 

I have always been able to keep Damon and Javon on an ascendant course at school, but my efforts throughout the eight years that I have known this family of necessity required a tremendous expenditure of time and energy.  I still give the family huge amounts of my time, but in the greatly improved environmental and attitudinal context of the present my efforts are now overwhelmingly expended for purposes directly moving these three striving souls onto those ascendant courses rather than for the removal of obstacles.

 

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Damon is poised to earn the Student of the Year Award again (I gave him that honor at last year’s Annual New Salem Educational Initiative Banquet) among the 125 students and family members in my network.

 

He is a quite extraordinary young man and he responds with alacrity to every challenge that I place before him.  At just Grade 8, Damon has transcended the achievements of even some of my very fine high school and college students.  Damon has now read the first three chapters (Economics, Psychology, and Political Science) of my nearly completed fourteen-chapter book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, written to give my students a full array of knowledge sets in the subject areas of economics, psychology, political science, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, literature, English usage, the fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics. 

 

The text is written at a level appropriate for high-achieving upper high school and university students, and intellectually ambitious adults.  At only Grade 8, Damon has reviewed each of these chapters for full mastery, and incorporated the knowledge attained into our discussions of journal and newspaper articles.

 

That is to convey, I communicate to my students that knowledge attained should be knowledge retained---  that knowledge is to be treasured and applied to an understanding and betterment of this world.

 

And Damon gets all of this. 

 

He has imbibed my message thoroughly and with gusto. 

 

This is a young man who has seen the deep and foreboding dark caverns of life and has emerged with an immense yearning for the light at the heights.  When Damon expressed an interest in pursuing a career in law, I went through various fields for him to consider beyond those courtroom displays from the sphere of criminal law that get such exposure on television dramas.  I told him about such fields as environmental law, entertainment law, marriage and family law, corporate merger law, and contract law.  He decided that the latter sounded interesting. 

 

Damon, most of whose family members never finished high school let alone matriculated beyond, is from what I can discern the only Grade 8 student at Coon Rapids Middle School aspiring at this juncture to be a contract lawyer, even in a community well-populated with university-educated professionals.

 

Damon is at the top of his accelerated math class and has a report card full mostly of A’s, with a few B’s.


His vocabulary at this point is sophisticated and his writing is expressive and frequently eloquent.   Eight years into his participation in the New Salem Educational Initiative, and four years away from his projected university experience, Damon is developing increasing levels of knowledge on a well-established base that will maximize his opportunities for success in the years ahead.

                                                                         

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When I deliver Damon back home after our weekly academic sessions, for the sake of time I work with Javon and Evelyn (who has now also become my student) right at the table in their dinette.  The latter reference implies the existence of furniture, which was absent in the St. Paul apartment;  on those days when for the sake of time I worked with Javon and Damon at that abode, we’d work sitting in the hallway for lack of light and anywhere to sit inside.  The new residence has a living room with adequate amount of furniture, as well as the table in the dinette.

 

Javon and Evelyn and I work academic magic at that table. 

 

Javon is only in Grade 2, but he has full knowledge of his multiplication tables and zooms through reading material at Grade 5 level.  I do a lot of explicit vocabulary building with Javon, so that words such as amicable, bountiful, concordant, prescient, and empathetic present no challenge for him.  At Grade 2, he finds these vocabulary items well within the range of comprehension and extension into his own verbal expression, thereby achieving and exceeding verbal skill levels more typically associated with children of the upper middle and upper economic strata. 

 

Evelyn, who back in Chicago was one of the few from her family who did graduate from high school and even took a few classes at a community college, has in her study with me regained control of all pre-algebra concepts and has moved into a study of algebra and geometry.  She now has vocabulary lists that I have generated for her that total 150 highly sophisticated words.  She will soon be reading Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education with me and on her own and is even as I write this applying to the closest community college in Coon Rapids.

 

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So this is quite a story of the lives of three members of a family, long stuck at the lowest economic level observed in the United States, now full of hope for ending generations of cyclical poverty through the power of education.

 

I endeavor with each day to serve my students and their families, with full application of what my West Texas pappy called, “elbow grease.” 

 

But providing direct academic instruction to my students and multiple services to their families constitute only part of my 16 to 18 hour days working full speed to impel the changes in K-12 education via the various venues and platforms I have created.

 

This is the commitment of a revolutionary whose life is guided by the conviction that the overhaul of K-12 education is the most important mission imaginable.

 

The provision of a knowledge-intensive K-12 education is the foundation for a future in which factual information and universally embraced ethics creates a world in which peace and empathic understanding replace violence and cultural antagonism.

 

The impartment of excellent K-12 education will also be our moral recompense due to people such as Evelyn, Javon, and Damon---  who have waited a very long time for this nation to become the democracy that we imagine ourselves to be.

 

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